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COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGY
The days of the whiteboard may be numbered as digital tabletops promise to boost collaboration, writes Cliff Saran
KEY POINTS
* Smart tabletops allow more distributed interaction than whiteboards
* Microsoft's Surface product suggests the technology is heading for the mainstream
* City University is creating an air-traffic control system with Eurocontrol
The Centre for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) at City University in London has been researching how humans work in teams to investigate how to make collaboration systems more effective.
The HCI design centre has been nuining a project with Eurocontrol, the organisation that oversees European airspace, to create an interface for the air-traffic control system that allocates departure gates to aircraft.
One of the technologies that the centre has been looking at is the idea of using a digital tabletop environment to enable people to express their ideas more easily.
Driving collaboration
Although they grace the walls of many meeting rooms, Neil Maiden, head of the HCI design centre at City University, says whiteboards do not encourage collaboration. In his experience, the person at the front takes control of the whiteboard, which means ideas from the rest of the group are filtered by this one individual....